My path into this work started with a question that still drives me: how do movements that cause real harm make themselves sound reasonable?
As a researcher, I’ve spent years studying how right-wing movements appropriate credible language — particularly women’s rights rhetoric — to build legitimacy for exclusionary agendas. My MPhil dissertation at Trinity College Dublin (awarded Distinction) examined how gendered narratives function as vehicles for xenophobia in U.S. and U.K. politics, tracing the mechanisms by which women’s rights rhetoric gets co-opted to justify exclusionary nationalist platforms — a pattern that maps directly onto the challenge platforms and AI systems face when harmful content is wrapped in the language of legitimate concern. My undergraduate thesis at Occidental College (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) traced the rise of ethnoreligious nationalism across the U.S. and Türkiye, examining the factors that drive ethno-nationalist movements across different political and religious contexts. Both were awarded Distinction.
That question has led me, increasingly, toward AI systems — because these are now the primary infrastructure through which narratives spread, gain traction, and resist intervention. Content moderation systems, recommendation algorithms, and generative AI tools are all making consequential decisions about the dynamics I’ve studied academically, often without the contextual understanding that those decisions require. I’m interested in the space between people who understand the technology and people who understand the problem — and in making sure that space gets smaller. My work here examines specific mechanisms: how recommendation systems amplify extremist content, how safety interventions succeed or fail at the technical level, and what gets lost when governance frameworks don’t account for how the systems actually work.
Before and alongside this research, I’ve worked across advocacy, operations, and program coordination — roles that gave me a ground-level view of how institutions actually function under pressure. At Outright International, I engaged with UN state delegations, agencies, and civil society coalitions during the General Assembly Third Committee, monitored opposition to SOGI and SRHR initiatives, contributed to research primers and joint NGO statements, and drafted policy analysis briefs that informed advocacy efforts and position statements presented at the UN. As a Program Assistant for the Young Initiative on the Global Political Economy at Occidental’s McKinnon Center for Global Affairs, I coordinated events covering human rights, international diplomacy, and global governance, managed stakeholder communications, and spearheaded the production of newsletters and annual reports for public and donor audiences. I’ve also worked in nonprofit operations and political fundraising infrastructure — processing high volumes of financial transactions and donor communications at World Vision Ireland, and managing campaign account operations and sensitive financial data at ActBlue. As a student senator and Director of Academic Affairs at Occidental, I helped manage a budget of over $500,000, conducted institutional research, and collaborated on funding initiatives that prioritized first-generation and low-income students.
I conducted field research in Tunisia during a semester studying politics and religious integration in the Mediterranean, collecting responses from women in the suburbs of Tunis about the impact of Political Islam on their rights in the wake of the 2011 Jasmine Revolution — work conducted in both English and French. I’ve lived and worked across four countries — Australia, the United States, Ireland, and Tunisia — in contexts ranging from grassroots phone banking to General Assembly committee rooms. That range is not incidental; the ability to attune quickly to different information environments, recognize context-specific dynamics, and draw cross-national comparisons is central to how I approach research and analysis.
I hold U.S. and Australian citizenship and speak English natively and French at an intermediate level.
Education
MPhil International Peace Studies
Trinity College Dublin · Distinction
B.A. Diplomacy and World Affairs, History Minor
Occidental College · Summa Cum Laude · Phi Beta Kappa